Success stories are inspiring, but it is easier to avoid mistakes than to repeat your successes and there is a lot to be learned from failure. So why do so many corporate-startups flame out? The real reasons can be hard to uncover but these obituaries offer some nice clues. Here is my top 10 list of startup post-mortems for some of the most notable fails. If you have friends or colleagues who are starting a new business inside a large organisation, and you found one of these post-mortems useful, please share this with them.

1. 10 Post-Mortems of
Failed Corporate-Startups
☠
Leonard Bukenya
leonard@aimforthemoon.com

2. 1. We had a lot of people on the bus, but...
It is not the number of people. It’s the RIGHT people who
commit to solving problems. Once you have a committed team
all hurdles can be tackled.
Leonard Bukenya | leonard@aimforthemoon.com

3. Dream big start small: the challenge is to have big ideas, but
create small experiments to test and learn.
2. We went for big fast
Leonard Bukenya | leonard@aimforthemoon.com

4. 3. We did not need any corporate assets
In a corporate-startup you always have to use the corporate assets.
Without these assets a corporate-startup can’t have an unfair advantage.
Leonard Bukenya | leonard@aimforthemoon.com

5. 4. Nobody understood what we were doing...
A corporate-startup needs to have enough support within the
organisation. Without support even the best ideas will not be
adopted or supported by stakeholders from the organisations.

6. 5. We believed more than we validated
Don’t continue your project if the data from validation doesn’t
support the idea. In a large organisation you tend to finish a
project because you promised to. Instead, if your data
invalidates your idea you have to stop and move on.
Leonard Bukenya | leonard@aimforthemoon.com

7. 6. We scaled right away
The first traction in acquisition doesn't mean you can scale right
away. You need to have a solid growth engine (acquisition,
retention, revenue, etc.) in place if you want to scale big.
Leonard Bukenya | leonard@aimforthemoon.com

8. 7. We said goodbye to learnings...
Learnings are not worth anything if you don’t apply them in your
next project. Instead of burying the learnings start using them in
you next project to be more successful. Remember: most
startups originate from the failure of a different startup.
Leonard Bukenya | leonard@aimforthemoon.com

9. 8. We had too many projects
Focus is an important key to success. Especially in a
corporate environment it’s hard to create a business part-time.
Create a team with full focus, instead of a team with a lot of
different projects.
Leonard Bukenya | leonard@aimforthemoon.com

10. 9. We had ideas that had never been done before
It has never been done before? It’s a big indicator you should not do it.
Look for other markets where the problem has been solved before and try
to replicate your business. Create inspiration from the Odon device.
Leonard Bukenya | leonard@aimforthemoon.com

11. 10. We had to give up, because it was too hard
There are simple solutions for complex problems. Even though
something might be hard, be creative to find an easier solution. For
example Google used manual selection to perfect its AI image
recognition instead of making the perfect AI.
Leonard Bukenya | leonard@aimforthemoon.com

12. www.aimforthemoon.com
Leonard Bukenya
leonard@aimforthemoon.com